1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to integrated circuit devices and methods for manufacturing same. In one aspect, the present invention relates to nonvolatile memory devices, such as NAND flash memory and other types of flash memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the increasing demand for nonvolatile data storage to support applications, such as video or audio players, digital cameras, and other computerized devices, there continues to be interest in having nonvolatile memory devices progress over time towards having smaller sizes, larger memory capacity, and improved performance. For example, the need to reduce manufacturing costs per data bit is driving the NAND flash industry to continuously to reduce the size of the cell transistors. But as fabrication process limitations (for example, limitations imposed by photolithography tools) limit the ability to reduce physical transistor sizes, there have been structural and/or design schemes proposed to increase memory density, such as, for example, stacking NAND cells in a direction perpendicular to the chip surface, thereby reducing the effective chip area per data bit without requiring shrinkage of the physical cell transistor size. However, there continue to be challenges associated with designing, fabricating, and operating vertical NAND flash memory devices.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for purposes of promoting and improving clarity and understanding. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the drawings to represent corresponding or analogous elements.